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Saturday, October 31, 2015

Once again, Halloween is upon us, compelling people to scare unsuspecting victims or be scared in many different ways. According to today's featured track, even supernatural beings are compelled to deliver the best of scares!

Friday, October 30, 2015

In which a bit before the concluding DonChare for Murasaki ver. is announced, this leaked visual for the still conjectural December 2015 White ver. surfaced and spreads the Japanese internet.

And deviating from many previous arcade title card themes mostly surrounding Japanese festival celebration or traditional court entertainment, this new design features elements of Japan's folk world creation mythos: If you remember from movies like Doraemon: Nobita no Sousei Nikki (NB. no relation to the firmware outside the theme), those side-buns (?) should have hinted well.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Today we're also getting the promised news about Taiko no Tatsujin V Version, as its official website got updated once again. There's a lot of meat in this grill, so scout closely this post to its very end!

With Murasaki Version's V 8.07 update becoming fully operative, the current arcade line receives yet another song from the Anime series Love Live! Sore wa Bokutachi no Kiseki (3/5/6/7) fares as an average Anime Oni challenge with its notechart, but it still is a welcomed addition towards the end of the month.

While the rest of the world is preparing all of their spooks and scares for the next Saturday, the Taiko Team is packing a Don Challenge month with a new entry for a quite recent Namco Original song series...

For another piece of news we missed last week, the Taiko V Version Twitter account has finally decided to reveal the actual winners of the DLC Poll campaign issued as part of V Version's release antics. Thanks to the picture above, we now know that -on top of the Anime/GM/NO songs we already received in the past months as DLC (plus the 2nd Legend of Heroes song)- the three Touhou arrangements coming to the public on November were actually 3 of the poll's winning choices!

That, however, doesn't seem like the end of it, as one last song has yet to be announced. Which music genre will the final track be fitted in? And will it be yet another brand-new addition or a returning classic? The answers to these questions (and more!) will be revealed this coming Thursday, as another tweet points out.

As a minor piece of news for today, Taiko Plus is having a lottery campaign since last Wednesday for the remainder of this month. In occasion of the release of KPP MP01, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's latest album/music video collection, the Apple-friendly game will randomly pick 4 players among the ones who have downloaded at least one of the artist's Taiko Plus packs to win one Kirakira Killer (きらきらキラー) design T-shirt in a celebratory present campaign. See how to join by checking the in-game notices.

While the two KPP packs are still continually available on iOS, Android's Shinkyoku Tori Houdai also adds Kyary Pamyu Pamyu songs in a limited period until November 20, where you could play Kirakira Killer, Fashion Monster, Mottai Night Land, PON PON PON and Tsukema Tsukeru for no additional charge. And playing them here also qualifies you to win the T-shirts!

Most of the events in Japan discourage or even outright ban the use of video cameras, and we pretty much have gotten over that we won't get concrete material to talk about preview and exclusive songs/notecharts from Taiko no Tatsujin's many event excursions.

Not this Autumn Reitaisai though. In addition to the rightfully publicized Akeboshi Rocket, the Japanese eSports press eSports Runner managed to recite the whole of the only new 10★ Oni notechart of the bunch: Last Brutal Sister Flandre S (最終鬼畜妹フランドール･S). You can check out its static notechart image here at eSports Runner.

Although at 200 BPM and asking for a quorum of 5- to 9-hits plus one devilish 24th stanza, there is surprising less to worry than other certain bigger names say Sotsu Omeshiki (same BPM, WTF long stream), and landing this not very far over Ura Cirno. If you have the speed and stamina, there should be no problem.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Since the last time we check on The Idolm@ster Must Songs Red/Blue, the website did go through multiple updates, but there isn't too much Taiko no Tatsujin stuff... Let's check it out briefly nonetheless.

Interviews, Now Boasting Twenty
The interviews hosted on the Vita im@s site would be awesome insights for Idolm@ster producers, asking for precious memories from voice actresses, composers and more involved in the franchise. The October 13 update, though, has a little more towards the Taiko no Tatsujin audience: interviews with "the face of Taiko Team" Etou and notecharter/resident (im@s) producer/Must Songs director Kuboken.

Idolm@ster Fan Service Everywhere
What is a tribute album/game without some fan service, referencing to some of the series' significant marks? Here are some of them added on a October 19 update:

Following our many SotW features here and there, you should at least know that 765 Production is not the only idol production company. Have idols from other production companies and even one of the most prominent non-idol NPC of the series making her idol debut... wait, that silouette... is that...!?

The Live Festival feature may look like the typical set-list event/medley mode from the Taiko no Tatsujin viewpoint, but it can be the perfect stage to re-enact the best known scenes across the decade! Expect homages to your favourite game/TV Anime/anniversary moments!

The Stamp Album feature carries from many recent console games, but other than Taiko goals like crown counts, Idolm@ster-centric goals like fan numbers will keep you busy. Similar to 3DS1/3DS2/Vita1, clear them goals to raise your Producer Rank for more fetaures!

Ever imagined if your favourite idol(s) could send you a heartfelt message? Now you can receive them with the Messages feature!

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Get it? Taberuna mean "not to eat"? …okay. Still, the 11-way tie between Korean and Hong Kong Donders Donderful Combo-ing Taberuna 2000 Oni should be the highlight of this month's tourney result (it would have been a 12-way tie had 12th place's Iyaro from Hong Kong not let his hand loose at a large note somewhere in his DFC run). Let us marvel at half the table tinted orange.

Less astonishing in the Muzukashii department with the speed devil Charlie Dash, Hong Kong's Molamola~ takes it with only 5 good hits. Shoutout to Donders in Malaysia from which Rudu also hails from, who makes it in the rankings snatching a 19th place after the regrettable miss last month.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

As you may remember, today is kicking in this year's edition of the Hakurei Shrine Autumn Reitasai convention, where the Taiko Team has been invited once again to share some Touhou love through the Taiko no Tatsujin games.

For the V Version side of the Taiko content, we have Akeboshi Rocket as a general newcomer on the Taiko series, making its debut alongside the Reitasai Taiko arcades' limited songlist. With 560 notes, this 8-star Oni proves to be the easiest of the Ps Vita Touhou song trio, albeit having some tricky clusters spliced in its notechart. Remember that this song (together with Night of Knights and Demetori's arrangement of Necrofantasia) will be publicly available for free from November 5th to January 6th!

Since our last glimpse at a potential version change for the Murasaki ver. arcade build, arcade equipment suppliers like this one have listed conversion kits for the said new version (simply "Taiko no Tatsujin December 2015 ver." here) in their catalogues, the deadline (Sept 25) matching our last scope well (tweeted Sept 13).

And just to remind all of the operators out there, no the new HD Taiko no Tatsujin does not work with the old Taiko no Tatsujin 14 machines. You have to get new machines to profit from the new arcade-targeting audience.

Video footage of brand new arcade games can turn out to be hard both to record and to find it on the Internet. In the case of Synchronica, it's so difficult and low-spread that the first video of the series' Phase 1 Tenkaichi Otogesai song is actually a sim file for a beatmania IIDX PC Emulator!

However, the song is still there with gameplay video footage, so if you have a Nicovideo account you can check out the link above for Taku Inoue's AOU contribution.

Beef bowl chain Sukiya collaborates with Taiko no Tatsujin once again! By siding your main menu items with this special set, you can get one of the four Taiko no Tatsujin branded gifts, including a tote bag, lunchbox, picnic blanket or cutlery set.

Plus Sukiya is giving away 15 copies of Wii U3 (including 5 bundles)! Check out their site for more!

Only two days before, we are adding Help me, ERINNNNNN!! Sachiko Kobayashi ver. to the Autumn Reitaisai song list! And unlike the other three which are exclusive previews, this new rendition of the popular Touhou arrangement by the Last Boss herself is just exclusive to the October 18 event.

Thanks for everyone who voted in the first part of the public vote! Now to determine the one and only Donders' Choice we move our battlefield (?) to Donder Hiroba, where you vote with your credits from today to October 25!

Every registered Donder Hiroba user can have at most five (5) votes, the first of which is given for free to all. To get the other four, play on Murasaki ver. with your Banapassport-connected account and you will get one ticket per credit.

Now with your ticket(s), you can check out the list of songs up for choosing. Clicking the title will take you to its Creofuga page where you can listen and read the artist comments. When you are sure which song the vote should go to, click the corresponding Vote (投票する) button. If you have a Twitter profile linked to the Donder Hiroba account, you can have it tweet out your vote on the way too!

Thursday, October 15, 2015

The fact that there's no relevant news on the weekly Taiko Team blog entries makes easier for us to delve into today's actual hot topic: the release of the first batch of songs for the second Tenkaichi Otogesai tournament!

Above is a video of Aka no Senritsu (4/6/7/10), the representative track from the Taiko franchise and Ao no Senritsu's brand new sequel. Checking in with 902 notes, its Oni mode offers a similar challenge to the aforementioned Taiko PSP DX debut song, with the added inclusion of more complex patterns and mono-color, long cluster nightmares crawling back from Hatsune Miku no Gekishou, also from PSP DX.

We don't know yet if the other Tenkaichi Otogesai songs will ever reach Taiko Murasaki for this tourney's edition (save for the Synchronica song), but it's our duty to report their first videos anyways. Skip to the jump in order to see the rest of the 2nd Tenkaichi Otogesai's Phase 1!

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Been long since the last new C-POP DLCs? Here are some more now! Starting today (October 14) is the B'in Music Popular Song Pack 1 (相信音樂人氣樂曲組合包 1), featuring three songs released under the B'in Music label, available for HK$21 / NT$90.

And other songs from the recent Japanese ver. Popular Song Pack 6 including Nightmare Survivor, Venomous, Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu -Gekijouban- and My Soul, Your Beats! are also confirmed to be available as single-song add-ons, at the usual HK$10 / NT$43 each.

And just to remind you that Little Apple has ended its limited free period, but is still available for HK$7 / NT$30. Surprisingly it is cheaper than a single song in Japanese version.

Being a family friendly game, Taiko no Tatsujin will have to upkeep some standards in terms of customizable contents, like your player name for instance, and some bad words will have to be forbidden. This continuously work-in-progress list compiles more than 700 NG (=no good) words that will not be accepted by the Apple smartphone Taiko no Tatsuji Plus due to sensitive or offensive reasons, as compiled by fans.

Please be very well noted that these words are forbidden for good reasons, including private body parts or in connection with racial insensitivity, sexual, violent or criminal themes or large-scale tragic events. We strongly discourage you from randomly using any of the words without fully understanding what they mean, and even if you do know what they mean it is still advised to steer well clear of them.

Here, though, let's talk about how the game detects NG words by checking out some special rules that the system follows, with examples assuming [たいこ] and [どんだー] as NG words (they are not though, why would you ban "Taiko" and "Donder" as names) :

Splicing the words with punctuation including ー～！？ like in [た！いこ] [たいーこ] does not bypass NG words detection even when put in-between characters, minus some very limited exceptions.

Replacing some of the kana with a small form or a homonym like in [たぃこ] [たゐこ] also does not bypass detection.

For NG words with a long vowel bar (ー), replacing with small form vowels or tildes (～) like in [どんだぁ] [どんだ～] are also forbidden as they are read almost the same.

Replacing long vowel bars with a large form vowel like [どんだあ] is acceptable for a limited some of the NG words.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

When building up a rhythm game franchise, it's not so uncommon to spot tracks from the past games of the companies making said rhythm games. This statement has been very true to the Taiko franchise, but many others have resorted to classic Game Music to bulk up their song libraries!

Friday, October 9, 2015

We were so enthusiastic about the opening of the Tenkaichi Otogesai site we stole the thunder for today's Namco Taiko Blog. Minus a full version of AILE's comment on Aka no Senritsu (朱の旋律) including concepts like "not to let your guard down before the final hit" "a fiery passion no matter how many times you play", this post reinforces that that the song will hit Murasaki ver. cabinets at participating AOU shops first-hand on October 15.

And making Taiko history as the first Synchronica port and the first Taku Inoue work (despite all his involvement with God Eater, Idolm@ster and Tekken), Synchronica's qualifier song Yoake Made Ato 3-byou (夜明けまであと3秒) will also hit Murasaki ver. in some undetermined future date and manner. Synchronica will also get both songs, just in reverse order.

And returning from last year, both songs will be joining the Tenkaichi Otogesai folder with the four old preliminary, cross-inclusion songs FLOWER, Garakuta Doll Play, Got more raves? and Kita Saitama 2000.

Hot on the heels of Namco's two songs for the second AOU rhythm game event are two more song teasers! The first is from Sega's maimai Orange PLUS, which will be very fast (205 BPM!) and be named after a Greek god of wind. Now, there's several wind deities in Greek mythology, but the first that comes to mind would be Aeolus. Maybe that'll be the song title?

The 4th song is from Konami's representative, Sound Voltex III Gravity Wars! Again, a vague hint to the song's theme; Raisis, SDVX's girl mascot, finds something called a 'Voltenizer Maxima' and decides to....gain muscles? Is this a song about muscles? But Muscle March seems too weird for this collab...wait. Right. This is Konami, not Namco.

Anyway, keep in mind that despite the hints, these are all brand new songs, so you don't have to look in each respective game's songlists for matching tunes; you won't find em!

Continuing to follow the popular autumnal sayings Autumn of Appetite (食欲の秋), Autumn of Arts (芸術の秋), Autumn of Sports (スポーツの秋) (and whatever else that might have propped up as the writing of this) is the October song choices for the monthly Facebook tournament with AC0 Murasaki ver. Asian version:

Taberuna 2000 Oni (10★) → Autumn of Appetite (Taberuna = don't eat)Charlie Dash! Muzukashii (8★) → Autumn of Arts (classical music is well considered as art)
And that both being rather erratic complex notecharts → Autumn of Sports (?)

This tournament runs from October 10~18 and results will be announced on the 21st. Plan out your trips to the arcades now, and remember that Gekkabijin will stay for only a few more days if you haven't played it yet.

Speaking of, have you been testing yourselves at the finally-arrived Ranking Dojo mode? If you are curious about the usual Dojo statistic charts for the Asian version, stay tuned to the official Facebook page where they will be released in the near future.

With the weekly Taiko Team blog entry being delayed for one day, we have a free Thursday to feature in one post the crossed-over Tenkaichi Otogesai songs coming to the latest SOUND VOLTEX title (SDVX III GRAVITY WARS), in occasion of the Japanese music game tournament collaboration's 2nd edition. For those who are a bit confused by the gameplay footage above, please remember that SDVX games are played with a built-in board made of 4 front buttons (for the grey markers), two back buttons for the 2-columns-wide yellow holders and two side paddles for the two neon-colored sliding holders (blue on the left and pink on the right).

Of course, our thumbnail-featured video couldn't be nothing else than Kita Saitama 2000, the track coming from Taiko no Tatsujin games. As you may notice, the background song is indeed the oh-so-familiar 2000 series track, but correctly hitting the markers will result in many different sound distortions from the arcade, unlike many other bemani music games where the base song is mainly played by the player by correctly hitting the markers.

Below are the links for the other three Phase 1 songs from the 1st Tenkaichi tourney that got added today on SOUND VOLTEX:

As the month of October barges in, the Arcade Operator Unit's Tenkaichi Otogesai Twitter account has revealed that the website for this year's event will be up very soon, revealing the new songs involved and their authors' comments about the tracks' creation.

That, however, doesn't stop the AOU guys to tweet part of those comment pages as quick teasers! The first early song tidbits come from the Taiko no Tatsujin-related (yet unknown) artist.

As Bandai Namco is joining this year's edition of the Tenkaichi Otogesai tournament with two franchises, the second track comes from a composer who is more akin to the Synchronica fields. This piece of music will offer gentle rhythm to soak in, at the price of a "murdering beat" which is more akin to a moskito's biting.

While it is confirmed that this year there will be no newly cross-included songs for the second Tenkaichi Otogesai, that doesn't mean old songs cannot be cross-included. The new contenders Synchronica and Sound Voltex will be receiving Kita Saitama 2000, Garakuta Doll Play, FLOWER and Got more raves? in the coming weeks. In particular all four will be Technical 18s on Synchronica!

For trivia, note that Sound Voltex already has a remix of FLOWER by some previous means, and Synchronica already has Saitama as yet another Technical 18.

Tekken is one of Bandai Namco's flagship franchises and perhaps the most famous and successful 3D fighting game series, spanning both arcade and console. Its draw comes from the fighting styles of the varied and colorful characters, inspired by real life martial arts. Plot-wise, the central story is the various happenings within the Mishima family, with drama, backstabbing, revenge, and... pacts with ancient deities, and super-science? In any case, there's always more to the recurring King of Iron Fist tournament that draws all these competitors together for a good competitive slugfest, and it's the same for the characters in the game too.

Namco has tapped Tekken's songs several times just as it did fellow 3D fighting game Soul Calibur, due to the widely varied soundtrack of the series. The genres may span several musical styles, but have a central electronic theme to them, which lends itself to many different and varied charts.

Monday, October 5, 2015

Here is a pictoral guide on how to support your favourite songs at the first round of voting for the World Championship 2016 Song Contest! The voting started last Saturday on October 3 and will end on October 12.

Before you start, make sure you have a Twitter account, which is what Creofuga use to connect to you and track the votes. Each person may put in one vote for each song each day, so you on your own can give a song at most 10 votes of support!

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Sorry if you were here earlier today/last night and saw our hiccup on the SotW scene. With Lokamp not readily available for the weekend, the rest of the crew had a little miscommunication breakdown and ended up releasing a SotW on a song we already covered.

Now as a replacement feature, in view of a regrettable piece of news hit earlier this week, we once again dedicate this column as a tribute to a recently deceased talent.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

One of the most discussed piece of recent Taiko no Tatsujin media among the general (especially western) public is this person exhibiting bizarre levels of body movement as he plays Saitama 2000 Muzukashii. He did not get a Full Combo, but the moves sure wowed a lot of commenters and social-network goers. A sequel video has the same person playing equally flashy moves with Angel Dream Muzukashii.

Now this might not struck some as impressive, especially to core players: Saitama 2000 and Angel Dream hasn't been in league with the hardest of songs for some 10 years, plus it is the Muzukashii notechart (both 7★) we are talking about, pailing to nothing when coming to, say, the first Murasaki ver. Gold Tatsujin ranker. It can also be said that these performances just caters to a completely different set of audience for entertainment and it's cool that he does him and people like him for that.

Let's hear what your take on this is. And where do you want to see him next? Progressing to Oni? Play crazier songs like Yuugen no Ran? Work on actually Full Combo while pulling the stunts? Tell us down below.

Friday, October 2, 2015

In what might become a series as hinted by IOSYS talents, we go to today's new song unlocked from DonChare in October.

聖徳たいこの「日いずるまで飛鳥」 Shotoku Taiko no "Hi Izuru Made Asuka" (4/6/7/9; 814 note on Oni/Master Route)
And our new Namco Original is a forked path song, sang by the same vocalist as the classic doujin song Cirno's Perfect Math Class. Unlike the other one there is no Ura notechart. But hey forked paths has gotten so rare ever since Ura notecharts are a thing, and it's good to have a new one after Dragon Night.

Be warned though, even when the start feels like a happy medium-speed 8★ with just longer streams, there are about 170 notes in the middle on a steroid-like sped up section with frequent even-number clusters to throw you into off beat to warrant the 9th star. That's gonna break some combo if you can't keep up with the speed.

But this forked path is weird: it force-threw back to Normal notes after that little section even with almost perfect play. I mean would there be any secret password or something to access the Advanced Notes? I heard people like to use their birthdays as password (which is a bad move).

While the TGS Special Event rewards is still coming, i-device users can have a little preliminary fun with Taiko no Tatsujin Plus's slated new song releases on the Gakkyoku Tori Houdai model for October:

On a rather downer of a note to end the day, we are struck with the news that renowned Vocaloid and anime music composer/producer samfree (born Takayuki Sano) has passed away on September 24 due to (unspecified) acute internal causes. The embedded tweet above is his family releasing a brief orbituary on his Twitter feed earlier today.

In Taiko no Tatsujin, one of his most famous Vocaloid work Luka Luka Night Fever has just debuted on the (AC0) Murasaki ver. arcade the past March, and is expected to be included in Wii U's Atsumete Tomodachi Daisakusen (Wii U3) to be released in November.

We here at Taiko Time would like to join the masses on the internet and wish his soul rest in peace.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

It is time for another of these, talking about the inner works of preparing for the World Championship 2016 event. Today's theme is "Smooth Tournament".

But first, did you know that there is a built-in options menu for all Taiko no Tatsujin arcade cabinets? Via this menu you can set many things, like the sound volume, the brightness of the screen, text flowing speed and more, just like how you can set up your own monitor and room conditions at your own home, and with the console games!

The only difference is that these options are limited to staff members of the arcade center, because these settings are operator-focused functionalities. But if you ever need something set, approach a staff of the arcade room for help. The more you know.

And that wasn't the main point, now it is. Remember when Etou asked for general opinions and thoughts for tournaments in general way back in March? A lot of people has responded, including participating Donders, staff of hosting arcade rooms, and tournament organizers, giving a lot of precious feedback. With that, the Taiko Team has come up a number of new ideas. Let's talk about some of them, within the aspect of smoothening the procession of tournaments (in general, not limiting to WCS2016).

Now hands up if you ever faced such situations:

Choosing my song for the match, but where is that song again, argh I can't find it... oh no time is running out, and I can't go back and choose again... orz

This tournament ask for Detarame and Detarame only, but I have set Double Speed to be always on. I am disqualified for not setting back and now I can't try once again... orz

Nooooooo, I forgot to set Shin-uchi back there... orz

Wait wait wait I haven't noted down the scores for both side and the numbers are already gone... orz

These and many more of the similarly embarrassing accidents just sucks so much, right? Having to deal with these accidents also sucks for taking up much time. So as another new operator-focused functionality, the Team present to you "Smooth Tournament Mode" which, as the name says, can smoothens proceedings of tournaments. ...oops, more like "presented" because it is already added for the October 1st update just happened today!

The exact details won't be spoken too much here, because again it is very much operator-focused, but given the chance at the next update news they would! Now just anticipate this mode at your next local tournament or WCS2016, and remember to vote for songs you like at the Song Contest starting right now, to determine the Donder's Choice winner!

Finally a preliminary notice that next week's Namco Taiko Blog will be off for one day, moved to Friday, October 9th instead of the 8th. Do have fun then anyway.

Welcome to a new month! While we wait for the DonChare news to come in, let's check out the First Videos for the new update!

DRIVE A LIVE (3/4/5/7; 456 notes on Oni) (video processed to bypass muting)
Featuring three units from the 315 Production company and *Touma Amagase, Teru Tendo and Kyoji Takajo as the main dancers, the lively male-voiced song from the SideM line uses an abundance of double hits and enters off beat quite frequently. Still nothing too taxing to make this unjust as 7★, compared with the likes of Attakai'n Dakara or Highschool love (Tekken).

Shine!! (3/4/5/6; 346 notes on Oni)

A pretty standard 6★ with mostly only single-color triples and a lot of drumrolls. The notecount here once again references the fictional idol agency in the series works.

Shine!! (546 notes on 9★ Ura Oni)

Being the single Anime that spawns the most Ura notecharts (3 out of 4 songs), Shine!! comes with a medium-high 9★ Ura Oni, with closely packed longer clusters (5-hit a majority) and semi-regular mixed streams.